Once A Queen
by Valiant Flower
Summary: The Golden Age of Narnia: Children are going missing from Terebinthia, and an ancient civilization has been rediscovered.
1. Introduction

Hey, people! I haven't seen a story about Lucy's life yet, just Peter and Edmund, so...the temptation was too great. XD

Sorry if the characters are too OOC, but I tried.

Disclaimer: No, I only own Emily, Elizabeth, David, and people you don't recognize. Unfortunately.*sob*

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When Dad got the draft, the very first thing that I heard was nothing. Stunned silence. Then Mum and Susan started to cry. Edmund got mad and jumped up off his chair so fast that it fell over, and then ran up to his room. Peter was trying to stay strong for us, but I could tell that he was afraid. I went over and gave him a hug, and he held onto me. I was scared too. Dad had gotten the letter that morning, and it was obvious that he knew it was his duty to go, but he did not want to.

I had never seen him cry before, except once when Edmund fell out of a tree and landed on his head. We thought he was dead. And Daddy had cried. Now we knew that Edmund was very much alive, but Dad was crying again and holding Mum.

Through my tears, I idly wondered if Ed wanted to come back down, instead of being all alone upstairs. I looked up at Peter and whispered, "Ed?"

He shook his head, "Later. Or Dad will go get him."

Dad was the only person who really understood Edmund, and now he was leaving. It was only natural that Ed would be the most upset, next to Mum. My best friend Emily's dad got drafted, and now he's back, injured. Before he came back, Emily never came outside if she could help it, and her Mum always wore black. I don't _ever_ want my family to become like that.

Peter suddenly shifted me off of his lap and and went upstairs.

_I hope he's talking to Ed. __**Nicely**__. _I thought.

He wasn't. About five minutes later, we all heard them yelling at each other.

"Don't you think we care about Dad too?! You aren't the only one!"

"You know what? You can _never_ take Dad's place! You don't even try to understand!"

And on, and on, and on.

I got up and started heading for the stairs with Dad, but Susan stopped me.

"It's okay, Lu. Dad will handle them," she whispered.

Slowly, it got quieter, and Peter came back down, looking mad.

"I can't stand him sometimes!" he fumed.

"Peter!" Mum said, putting a hand on his arm. "He's your brother! Try to understand him."

"I'll try." Then Mum looked at Susan and me and asked us to try also. "He's taking it harder than you. Please promise that you'll try to understand."

Susan sniffed, then nodded. "Yes, Mummy," I whispered. He was my brother, after all.

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The next day, I tried to walk with Ed to school because I thought he might be lonely. Unfortunately, his friends came up and started teasing him about being with me. When he got mad, I left. I just started walking faster. I don't like his friends. They're mean, and all that they do is bully people smaller than them, me included. They pick on Edmund too, he just doesn't realize it. That's why he joined them. I know he isn't completely like that. He's still my brother.

Eventually Emily came and walked with me. "Where's Edmund?" She asked, looking around. She's always had a bit of a crush on my brother even if he does pick on her. She thinks he's handsome and used to rant about him all the time. Then her Dad left, so she was temporarily distracted. Now she's back to Edmund, so she'll go on and on about the color of his hair. She is pretty, not to mention nice, so if Edmund cared, he could possibly like her back. (I stop that train of thought, because now I'm beginning to sound like my aunt.) She considers it an honor to get teased by Edmund, because then he actually shows that he knows that she exists.

I think she's insane. But a good insane.

"Em? Dad got drafted yesterday."

She stopped walking. "Really?"

"Yes."

"I'm awfully sorry! How's Edmund taking it?"

I knew she'd bring him up. "Not that well. He and Peter got in a fight last night."

"Don't they always?" she asked.

I stared at her, and she looked back at me. "Oh, Lucy! I didn't mean it like that. I meant....well.....haven't they been arguing before?"

I started walking again. "Yes. But not that bad."

"Emmy!" Her sister Elizabeth came running up.

"What?"

"Daddy's sick! Mummy wants you to come."

She looked at me, then back at her sister. "Lizzy, how bad is it?"

"I don't know! Mummy wouldn't let me see him."

She went pale, "Alright, I'm coming. Bye, Lucy! Bye, Edmund!"

I watched her as she ran down the street with her sister trailing.

A notice in one of the windows mentioned something about the queen. I wished that I was royalty; life would be so much easier...

"C'mon, Lucy, we'll be late!"

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First chapter! Just to make it easier to understand, here are the ages: Peter-14; Susan-13; Edmund-9; Lucy-8. If Lucy seems too old, pretend that she's writing this as she grows up, in a diary or something just to remember it all. I based the Pevensie's ages off how old I thought they were when I read the book. I know it's not canon, but that's how I'm writing them. Feel free to imagine them differently.

Sorry about any non-British things. Correct me if you see any!

Reviews are appreciated!


	2. About Atlantis

"Peter! Peter, look at this!" Susan jumped up and ran out of the library to find our brother.

I sighed and closed my own book. Susan rarely got excited like this, so I figured that there must be a good reason.

We had been going through books for the first four years, trying to find the older ones with the correct Narnian history. Jadis had changed quite a lot of them, so it took a long time to get them all sorted out. Even now, eight years into our reign, we were still finding books that were hundreds of years old.

"Lu, do you know what Susan's going on about?" Edmund poked his head into the room as I got up to follow my sister.

"No, I'm going to find out," I told him, passing him by, "Come with me?"

"Of course, my Lady, if you'll have my company," he fell to one knee dramatically and grabbed my hand.

"I suppose," I said, pretending to be reluctant.

"Oh, thank you, my queen!" he grinned as he swept a low bow from his kneeling position.

"You're very welcome, good sir, but yonder Queen is leaving, and we must follow," I giggled at the court speech that I was still attempting to master.

"If you ask it of me, I would do greater things than this for you, Queen Lucy," he got back up and waited for me to start walking after Susan.

"Greater things than what, following Susan?" I challenged, laughing.

"…yes!" he proclaimed, grabbing my hand and pulling me down the hall.

I ran after him, calling for Susan in between more giggles.

"In here, Lu!" she called from a door ahead of us.

She and Peter were bent over a leather bound book. Susan was pointing to something that, from behind, seemed to be a map.

"See?" she asked, gesturing to it for us to look at.

It_ was_ a map, written in the old Narnian language. I looked at Edmund for translation.

"Oh, both of you look!" Susan pointed at a place in the middle of the ocean there was a picture of four pillars that seemed to be made of marble or something close to it. It was labeled _Atlantis_.

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"So what do you think?" Peter asked the centaur. We were back in the library with Orieus, Mr. Tumnus, a leopard, two dwarfs, and a dryad, among others who could possibly tell us about what Susan had found.

"Atlantis was a great power of the sea, hundreds of years ago," Mr. Tumnus said, "The people were …aggressive. They wanted complete dominance of the world, much like some countries do now," he paused, and even though he didn't say it, we all knew that he was speaking of Calormen.

"After conquering Galma, Terebinthia, and the Lone Islands, they became allied with Calormen while Archenland and Narnia joined forces. We didn't have a chance to win against the two powers of the world, but I suppose it was like Jadis. We had to try.

"Both Calormen and Atlantis were deceitful. Neither held true to their agreement. They met each other in the middle of the Eastern Sea while each was sailing to invade the other country and there was a battle.

"Neither side won. The Calormenes set the Atlantean ships aflame, but the Atlanteans had better technology. Better even, some say, than we do now. All ships were lost."

"How do we know what happened there if all the ships sank?" Edmund asked, brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes.

"That's the problem. Before Jadis came to power, a scroll washed up on the shore describing all the details of that battle. Most were very bloody and I will not repeat them here, but it told us that someone had survived, and because the island sunk along with its king (who had been on one of the ships), the survivors must have managed to live beneath the waves."

There was silence.

"But… that's impossible!" Susan protested, "The survivors must have sailed to another island and written those scrolls. No one can breathe under water except the merpeople!"

"Queen Susan, I'm sure you know that some enchantresses put spells on their kingdoms. When they die, the kingdom crumbles," the dryad said.

Susan nodded.

"This was how it was. It went down below the waves. No one would have been able to escape before it sunk."

"Then how can people still inhabit it if it's crumbled?"

"These aren't people as we think of Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, your Majesty," she explained, "These creatures that we speak of are full of magic. They were once loyal to the Narnian crown, but one of the kings became obsessed with power, wanting more than any one person should ever have, much like Jadis. We don't know for sure, though, if people are still there."

"If they were a part of Narnia at one time, it seems as though we need to go find it and reclaim it," Peter spoke up.

"Peter! We can't breathe underwater! And we don't know if they're still vicious," Susan said angrily.

"But, Su, they're our people!"

"_Were_, Peter! What do you think happened to make them rebel?"

"I don't know; Jadis, perhaps? I still say that we need to find out," he said stubbornly.

"General, what do you have to say?" Susan turned to him, and her eyes were practically begging him to tell Peter that this was ridiculous.

"It is possible that they are still dangerous people, King Peter," he started, "And what Queen Susan says is true. We cannot breathe underwater. Although Queen Susan, the merpeople could be of assistance when it comes to the ocean, and, because Atlantis was once part of Narnia, it is your duty to find the people and invite them to return to Narnian rule."

Susan sighed, "If it is our duty, then I suppose we must go."

"Well, Susan, you and Lucy could stay here if think it's unsafe," Edmund said, and I could tell that he was trying not to smile.

"What? Stay here while my brothers go to the unknown sea realm? Of course not!" she said, shocked.

"Then it's settled!" Peter said happily.

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"Lucy?" Susan knocked on my door that night.

"Susan!" I threw the door open.

"Lucy, I'm worried," she said, sitting on my bed, "What if these people are truly dangerous and attack? We'll be under water and won't be able to make a quick escape."

"Well," I said, curling up on a chair, "If they could breathe air at one time, maybe they still can and we can meet them on one of the islands to make an agreement."

"That's true…oh; I just can't stop thinking that something terrible is going to happen!"

"Maybe you're right, but we'll face that later. It doesn't matter right now."

"Alright," she sighed, "Thank you, Lucy. Good night."

"G'night, Su."

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And now we get the story!

_On Atlantis: _I'm deviating from what Plato says about it, so if you're angry with that, I'm sorry, but…fanfiction! And I'm sort of basing the Calormenes and Atlanteans off Sparta and Athens. Sort of.  
_On Edmund's betrayal: _Yes, I skipped it. I didn't want to just repeat all the movie line, because we all know what happens. The first chapter was really just a comparison chapter so that we can all look back and see how far Lucy's character has come.

Please review!_  
"And this is for posterity's sake, so please, be honest. How d'you feel?" _(Cheers to anyone who knows where that's from!)

Thanks for reading!  
-Lucy-


	3. Who will help?

It had been ages of waiting while we looked up everything that we could about Atlantis. We each had a different way of working at it – Peter was excited, Susan did a fair job of looking excited, Edmund acted rather like he was only doing a duty (I think he desperately wanted to start the journey at once), and I suppose I was indifferent to waiting. I wanted to start, just as Edmund did, but we had to stay for a while, so why not learn as much as possible?

It was tedious work. Most of the books that we had sorted through already in the past years needed to be checked again, and the documents that hadn't been searched had to be gone through thoroughly. Every so often, one of my siblings would come tearing out of the library with a book in their hands, but more often than not, we could go almost a week without finding anything.

On one of our days of court duty, a Terebinthian embassy came. I admit that I wasn't paying much attention; I was daydreaming. What would Atlantis be like? I needed to continue searching for information…

I jolted myself back. There would be plenty of time for searching. Aslan had set me on a throne, so I needed to pay attention to these people's needs.

"…raids against our people! We've been to the governor in Narrowhaven, but he doesn't know what to do, although his children have been affected as well. Can you help us?"

"Tell us exactly what's been happening," Peter said, sounding very kingly, but I knew that he was probably bored out of his mind.

"Well," a tanned farmer stood, twisting his hands in his tunic nervously, "Some of our fence wood was stolen, but we can live without that. It's more what's been happening to our children that has us worried, Majesties," he paused for breath.

"What's been happening to your children?" Peter said, leaning forward almost unnoticeably.

"They are being taken, Your Highness! Most of the children between the ages of nine and seventeen years are missing. If their parents try to keep them, then they fall sick. Already three have died."

Susan gasped quietly beside me. I looked quickly to Peter. We had to do something!

"Do you have any idea of who could be doing this?" Edmund asked.

One of the officials spoke up. "We've only seen figures, King Edmund. The earth around the house is always slightly muddy or darker, though."

Edmund nodded to himself, and then looked to Peter.

"We would like to discuss this in private," Peter told them kindly.

Susan stared hard at him as we left the hall.

Once we were alone, Susan practically exploded.

"What is there to discuss, Peter? Those people desperately need us to help them; we need to go to their aid!"

Edmund laid a hand on her arm, but she shook him off.

"I understand that, Susan," Peter said gently, "but we also need to think about who will go and who will stay."

"We're splitting up?!" I asked. I usually preferred to let my siblings handle political affairs, but this was one thing that I needed an answer on.

"Lu, someone has to stay and take care of the Narnians and the problems here. We can't all leave!"

I sat back, having heard a satisfying answer.

"So who will go?" Susan asked, her temper having apparently vanished.

"I can," Edmund said, just I asked to be allowed this time.

Peter looked back and forth at the two of us and said, "Lucy, I think Ed should go. He has more experience with -"

"Please let me go!" I begged. "I'm so tired of Ed or one of you coming home wounded!"

He considered this. Susan, Edmund and I all watched him quietly.

"Lu," he finally said, "I think that this will be dangerous, and I know that you could do just as fine a job as Ed, but please understand, for the sake of my sanity? I don't think that I could stand it if you were there alone right now."

As much as I wished I didn't, I understood him. There were threats of the giants invading, and we had been having less dealings than usual with Calormen, which is never good.

I was disappointed. I had hoped that I would be trusted enough to examine a problem by myself, but I should have expected this.

"Lu?" Susan's hand was on my shoulder. "Please try to understand?"

"I do," and I did, but I didn't like it very much.

"Thank you," Peter said, looking relieved. His shoulders dropped a bit, as though he had them tensed while waiting for my answer.

I couldn't help feeling sorry for him and understanding his view. If I had been in his place and my littlest sibling had begged to go on a potentially dangerous trip, I would not want her to go either, I decided.

----

As we left, Edmund approached me.

"Lu? Do you really understand? We honestly need you here, and none of us could stand it if you got hurt."

"Yes, I understand," I assured him, but I also added, "But I think that you just want me to stay for peace of mind!"

"No," he began, and then noticed my smile, "Possibly."

"Thank you for being truthful," I said, and then I ran off to help Susan pack Edmund's things. I was going to worry over him and his belongings until he started wishing that I had gone instead of him!

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Long wait, and I have almost no excuses. I'm sorry!

If you like this story or the characters, you could vote for it to win an award at NFFR's forums. The link on is on my profile, and I need three votes to been in the voting. Nominations end November 16th, so if you want to nominate anything, do it soon!

Thank you all for reviewing; it means a lot to me!


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